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Beyond the (Geneva) Conventions . . .
Engaged indifference is a matter for reflection. Afghanistan has reached
celebrity relief status and now reigns as a star among funding entities.
While the European press wrings its collective hands over the treatment
of
Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, United Nations types demand ever
more
funds to pay for … well everything in Afghanistan. Unquestionably,
the world
is engaged with Afghanistan. Most, though, are engaged vicariously through
the media. Nations and people are concerned for the welfare of Afghans.
The
country is inundated with kindness.
Yet kindness contains a certain indifference to its object. How many dogs
have been killed out of kindness, to prevent their suffering? Happiness
is
expected on any terms for those about whom one cares … a little.
If
Afghanistan reverts to incessant and bloody tribal violence, will the
world’s
kindness be overly perturbed? If all of the prisoners now held at Guantanamo
Bay were declared “prisoners of war” by the Pentagon, would
the obligation
to be kind be fulfilled?
What great things have been made from kindness? Apprentice pieces perhaps,
but not masterpieces. Great works are fashioned out of love and suffered
into
being. Children are brought up with exacting parental standards because
their
parents love them. Kindness to one’s children is not an end in itself.
A love
that begets a child refrains from leaving the child to the guidance of
mere
kindness. The cold philanthropy of an international organization, even
one
with enough funds to pay for everything, can never take the place of that
terrible love willing to sacrifice its very self, only to make its object
more loveable. For in the end, kindness is a transient, ever in search
of
browner grass to make greener. Love abides.
James Clark
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(c) 2002 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 9
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of
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